What ‘Stranger Things’ teaches us about fatherhood

The second season of Netflix’s series Stranger Things is out. And it’s got some interesting things to say about the role of fatherhood.

It might appear that the show is about the paranormal, but in fact it focuses on family, the epicenter for American drama, and that’s what makes it so good.

Stranger Things 2 makes family the source of the central conflict of the second season’s plot. Joyce Byers (played by Winona Ryder) the frantic mother of the first season, is again willing to fight to the death to find out what’s wrong with her son, Will, but in the new season, her boyfriend, Bob Newby (played by Sean Astin), also steps up and tries to help out.

He tells Joyce, “I like you so much. Not just you, everything that comes with you. Your family, your boys.” During the course of the second season, Bob becomes a father figure to Joyce’s children by taking responsibility for them and making them a priority, which shows that fatherhood is something you do, not merely an accident of birth.